Star tracking telescopes have long been used in spacecraft for determining the location of a spacecraft by reference to imaged stars. A typical tracking system includes a star tracking telescope and can be controlled, moved, and rotated so at to keep the boresight axis pointing at a tracked star so as to keep an image of the star along boresight in a center of a field of view. The field of view may also include images of nearby stars. Images of nearby stars can further enhance on-board positioning systems to determine when the tracked star is the desired star for tracking. Images of the nearby stars can be used to determine a star pattern and hence function as a reference pattern of a cluster of stars where one of the stars within the cluster is to be tracked. Once the desired tracking star has been located and the telescope is moved to maintain tracking of that tracked star, images of the nearby stars may still disadvantageously remain within the field of view.
An image of nearby stars, within the field of view, passes through front-end filters and lenses in a peripheral portion of the front-end filters and lenses while an image of the tracked star enters through the center of the front-end filters or lenses as a tracked star that is tracked. When tracking a tracked star, it is desirable to maintain a high signal to noise ratio especially where the image of the tracked star is a faint image. However, off-axis nearby star images as well as sunlight can disadvantageously inject signal noise into the telescope.
Various prior means have been used to minimize unwanted nearby star and sun tracker noise. Existing tracking telescopes have used elongated cylindrical tubular shades with internal baffling to reduce the amount of off-axis noise. The longer the elongated cylindrical tubular baffled shade, the more that off-axis image noise is reduced. Such shades have been further modified with a shade extension also having a mating tubular cross section but cut so that the shade extension function provides increased shading from above noise images with no shading from below noise shading so as to provide a nonlinear off-axis shading profile. In both cases, the prior shades disadvantageously extended the over all physical length of the telescopes that are intended to fits within a predetermined and dimensionally limited existing spacecraft tracking system. The baffling of the prior shades also have various baffle angles so as to vary the amount of off-axis noise reaching the back end optical sensors. The various baffle angles have a limited angular design, and hence, disadvantageously have a limited amount of noise rejection.
In the photography art, shades have also long been used to limit the amount of off-axis glare from affecting the quality of photographic pictures. Some lenses have been equipped with attenuating lenses to reduce the amount of light received in high glare environments. However, such a shade also decreases the amount of light, and hence, decreases the image quality of the desired image to be photographed. This is similar to common sunglasses where it is desirable to reduce glare from all directions, including on-axis images. Cameras have used concentric lenses and filters where a center portion of the lens is clear and an outer portion is matted so as to fuzz without attenuation the periphery of the resulting photographic image so as to provide an artistic styled photograph where the center portion remains clear.
Handheld binoculars and telescopes have also been equipped with shades to reduce off-axis glares for improved image quality. Handheld binoculars and telescopes have been equipped with opaque filters to reduce image brightness across the entire field of view. Generally, handheld binoculars and telescopes do not use attenuating filters as these optical devices seek, in the main, to magnify a distal object.
Some optical filters and lenses have used fixed or variably sized shutters and sized irises to restrict the field of view, as is well known. In the case of costume eyeglasses, such as those used by children at play, a center portion of a lens is an open aperture while the remaining portion of the lens completely blocks image reception. In other types of costume eyeglasses, young adults have used decorative lenses where ornamental flakes are bonded to the lenses to provide a provocative appearance where the flakes obscure peripheral vision. Many people, especially the aged, have problems with night glare and have used sunglasses while driving a night. However, sunglasses dim on-axis vision that reduces visual acuity along an intended line-of-sight increasing the problems of poor night perception. Star tracking telescopes, and common handheld optical apparatus, such as handheld cameras, binoculars, eyeglasses, and telescopes suffer from the problem of injecting bright off-axis noise into the image quality of on-axis images or suffer from the problem of blocking needed peripheral vision and image reception. These and other disadvantages are solved or reduced using the invention.